10,000 Get Grant Letters On Rebuilding In Louisiana

By LESLIE EATON

Published: December 1, 2006

In a sign of painstaking progress for Louisiana's biggest rebuilding program, the state has sent letters to more than 10,000 families stating how much money they can receive to rebuild their homes under the $7.5-billion housing program Congress financed this year, state officials said yesterday.

But fewer than 50 families had actually collected the money as of Tuesday, prompting renewed concern among homeowners and some government officials about the pace of the program, which is called the Road Home and is widely considered the most important factor in rebuilding areas damaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The spate of ''award calculations,'' as the program calls them, represents a big increase from early last month, when fewer than 2,000 families -- out of almost 79,000 applicants at the time -- had been told how much they were eligible to receive.

On Nov. 6, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco ordered the private contractor managing the program for the state to reach the 10,000 mark by the end of November. Yesterday, the governor said she would require the contractor, ICF International, to send out 15,000 more award letters before the end of the year.

''The Road Home program is making progress, but I will not rest until 100 percent of our homeowners receive the money that we have made available to them,'' Ms. Blanco said in a statement.

The awards, which are based on the value of a house before the storm and are capped at $150,000, are reduced by the amount of money homeowners receive under their insurance policies. ICF says it has been slowed by the difficulty of getting information from insurance companies and is now sending out award letters without waiting for insurers' verification. This decision has speeded up the process but may mean that the size of the awards will be adjusted before homeowners receive them.

The number of homeowners who have actually received Road Home grants has increased by just 26 in the last month, to a total of 48. Those homeowners received an average grant of $50,715, according to the most recent statistics from the program.

Some program officials said they thought the delays in closing on the grants stemmed not from bottlenecks in the system, but from homeowners' uncertainty about rebuilding.

''I, for one, haven't decided what to do with my house,'' said Walter Leger, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which devised the program. Before Hurricane Katrina hit, Mr. Leger lived in St. Bernard Parish, the county just outside New Orleans where almost every building was badly damaged by water or an oil spill or both.

When they apply for the program, most people say that they intend to rebuild, said Carol Hector-Harris, a spokeswoman for the program. But when they learn how much they are eligible to receive, ''that's when the reality strikes,'' she said. ''What will it cost to insure my car? Are the schools back? Do I have a job? Is my grocery store back?''

Ms. Hector-Harris cited a recent study by the University of New Orleans that found that many residents of the city and nearby Jefferson Parish, perhaps as many as one-third, say they may leave in the next two years.

The study, which was based on interviews with 400 people now in the area, found that people were frustrated with the difficulty of making home repairs, especially in New Orleans, said Carrye Jane Shaw, a graduate assistant who worked on the study. More than 50,000 applicants have not yet had their first meeting with program counselors. Others, who have been to their appointments and had their property inspected, say they still do not know how much money they are eligible for.

''We may have gotten a letter, but our mailman doesn't deliver every day,'' said Alyson J. Elder, who lived near the north edge of Tulane University in New Orleans and now rents a house in the city.

''I've been out of my house for 400 nights now,'' Ms. Elder said. ''I just want to go home.''